Gas station robbery earns 7 years

Thursday

Mar 6, 2014 at 10:28 PM

Shadid adds two more for incident at justice center

Andy Kravetz of the Journal Star

PEORIA — It’s not that Chief U.S. District Judge James Shadid didn’t believe Lucious Turntine when he said no one was supposed to get hurt two summers ago when he and another man robbed a Washington gas station.

Shadid told Turntine, 26, that he did but that it didn’t matter because so much could happen in the split seconds of an armed robbery.

“Things can happen,” the judge said before imposing a seven-year prison term on Turntine on the charges of interference of commerce by robbery and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence for the July 1, 2012, robbery of the Casey’s General Store at 2201 Washington Road.

Shadid also sentenced Turntine to an additional two years for attacking an employee at the Tazewell County Justice Center where he was being housed pending trial.

The sentence was slightly more than his associate, Todd Lawson, 24, received in December. Lawson, the man who pulled a gun on the clerk, was sentenced to seven years behind bars. Shadid made note of that and said the additional time was for the incident in jail.

Whitney Graham, 22, of East Peoria, allegedly drove Lawson and Turntine to the gas station and waited outside while they went in, armed with a handgun as well as the combination to the safe, which she gave them. Inside, Lawson held an employee at gunpoint while Turntine opened the safe and took $425. The two men fled in the same car with Graham, who had worked at the store.

Her case still is pending.

Turntine and Lawson are alleged to be associates of the Bomb Squad street gang, which was targeted by local and federal authorities as part of the Don’t Shoot campaign.

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.